$1bn copyright claim against Tom Cruise dismissed

Actor Tom Cruise has had a $1 billion copyright infringement case against him dismissed.

Screenwriter Timothy Patrick McLanahan had filed the suit in December 2013, alleging Cruise and Paramount Pictures infringed his copyright in the film Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,released in 2011.

The screenwriter claimed it had infringed the script he had written in 1998 for a film called Head On that was never made.

McLanahan had claimed for damages of $1 billion, citing the fact that the film made almost $700 million through theatre ticket sales and a further $300 million through DVD sales and rentals. He said: “Because the Ghost Protocol film generated close to $1 billion, I am asking for this in damages.”

Judge Beverley Reid O’Connell for the US District Court of the Central District of California dismissed the case after the screenwriter failed to respond to an order to show issued on June 4.

Reid had warned McLanahan that “failure to respond to this order to show cause will be deemed consent to dismissal of the action”.